Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Arjun Murti, who roiled oil markets in March by saying crude may reach $105 a barrel, now says that may be conservative if the ``peak oil'' theory is right and world supplies are running out.

The belief that the world's oil supply is close to an irreversible drop is no longer ``on the fringes'' of the market, said a research report by New York-based Murti, who forecasts oil of $50 to $105 a barrel until 2009. UBS AG analyst James Hubbard, a former oil engineer at Schlumberger Ltd., said an inevitable decline in supply will start sooner and be worse than expected unless investment increases for many years.

They are warning explicitly about "peak oil" for the first time.

http://kcrw.com/cgi-bin/ram_wrap.cgi?/tp/tp051216Post-Election_Iraq_a

-Ptone

Interesting times.

There is enough oil in the refuge, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said recently, to supply every drop of oil needed by New Hampshire for 315 years, or Maine for 299 years. Her department also notes that it's enough oil for Washington, D.C., for 1,710 years.

It said that European and Asian users are out-bidding the U.S. for LNG.  I was very surprised to read that there has been "a global building boom" in LNG terminals, so that there currently are enough terminals to handle twice the current LNG capacity.

Isn't this the Catch 22 of Peak Oil in a nutshell?  We need massive investments in infrastructure to drive prices down, but those same future lower prices mean that you can't economically justify the investment.

To me, it feels like we're going to stagger around for a couple of years, cutting back on energy usage primarily to combat our ever-rising energy bills.

I think that will last for perhaps 5 to 10 years (Optimist!) and then we'll experience a rapid drop-off - a petroleum cliff, so to speak.

So what do we do?  I know posting on PO makes me feel better :-), but it doesn't build a greenhouse or learn how to raise chickens.

What resources are out there that will allow us all to prepare as best we can?

Frankly I'd rather look stupid in 20 years' time than for PO to send us into the 1800s again :-)

(and is it worrying that a lot of people are now talking about "what to do", rather than "will it happen".)

One person made the point that oil, while even in decline, would be enough for society to make a transition to other fuels, as painful as that may be.

It was my contention that if enough people got displaced during the transition, then the whole system would collapse. By displaced I mean, people society can no longer deal with. Right now virtually nobody is displaced because everybody who lacks the basics is either in a homeless shelter, on welfare, or in jail. If somebody NEEDS to get a meal, society WILL deal with them one way or another, even if that means sending them to jail for stealing.

However, at what % of displacement does society become completely incapable of dealing with the desperate people and the whole thing decends into anarchy? In a city of 1 million people, if you suddenly had 5% of its population (50 000) hungry and desperate for good, could that society's infrastructure deal with it?  My contention was that even a small % of displacement would lead to systemic collapse. (3% at the most).

 Though I know that nothing will stop the slide (fast or slow it doesn't matter it is all down hill) over the edge of a PEAK.  I listened and took mental notes.

 Energy;  Using an Solid Salt to fix Hydrogen too, that can eliminate the need to store the Hydrogen as a gas. Using a chemical reaction to OutGas the Hydrogen into the fuel system.  And just recharging the Solid Salt.  ANHO4 if my memory serves me was the Solid stuff, but don't quote me.

 Space; ( the final frontier ) We will get man back to the moon, because if we don't the Chinese and Russia/ESA will be the first to set up bases.  The Russians and the ESA and Japanese are doing their own building to get crews and stuff to the International Space Station, because well you know, we aren't doing much but looking at foam and going " Uh, is that stuff that bad?"
      We will have a CLV (Crew Launch Vehicle) Very soon if the Monies stay in hand, this is a get to the Moon "vehicle" not a get man back and forth to the Space Station.  Which NASA admin would love to fall into the Private sector and not out of NASA budget.

 All in all a rosy future awaits us, so sayth my brother, who works at a firm that works for NASA.

 Just thought you would all love a good laugh on a Monday morning.

If peak oil in a decade or three will make the cost for heavy construction work much higher it seems like a not to bad idea to build more and better roads.

Over here (Sweden) the road network is fairly ok but lacks maintainance.
There are bottlenecks in some cities and uneven standard on manny fairly large roads.

It would be nice to before the peak dig up and redo weak road bodies, upgrade unsafe 50 and 70 km/h stretches, level out steep inclines and get rid of bottlenecks in cities.  That is get a road network that is a nice one to have indefinately, if well built it well it will last a long while, especially if the maximum load for lorries is lowered. It would be natural to add more bicycle lanes when complementing within cities. We need the road network indefinately to get to the forest biomass and the rail network will never be as closely knit. There will probably also be a lot of smaller lightweight cars.

More investments in the rail network to get a larger capacity in anticipation of saving the economy of long haul lorry freight and more passangers is of course needed in parallell.  But it seems reasonable to do both when the rail network already is fairly ok.

CERA: Crude oil production capacity to grow 25% in 10 years
Sam Fletcher

Not only is the world not running out of oil soon, but widespread development of unconventional resources will boost global crude production capacity by 25% in the next 10 years, a representative of Cambridge Energy Research Associates told a US House of Representatives subcommittee hearing.

"We see no evidence to suggest a peak [in crude production] before 2020, nor do we see a transparent and technically sound analysis from another source that justifies belief in an imminent peak," said Robert Esser, CERA's senior consultant and director of global oil and gas resources, to members of the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee. "It will be a number of decades into this century before we get to an inflexion point that will herald the arrival of an `undulating plateau' of global hydrocarbon production capacity."

This was followed by an editorial saying that while it was OK for the senate to look into the issue they certainly shouldn't be encouraging any alternatives:

...There would be much wrong, however, if Congress embraced the most fretful side of an unsettled scientific question, worked itself into a panic, and rushed into law a series of energy mistakes. That's what usually happens with legislation motivated by alarm. Whole industries dedicated to economically hopeless energy forms yearn to be given life through the unholy consortium of exaggerated problems and activist politics.

Honda expects that once the plant is up to full  production it will be capable of an annual solar cell output of 27.5 megawatts of solar cell capacity.  The interesting thing is that this venture into solar cells has nothing to do with its hybrid auto program, but rather is an attempt to eventually become one of the world's largest manufacturers of solar cells.

What I think is highly significant about this move is that Honda is currently doing quite well in the car business and does not need to diversify into other areas ...... unless it has read the handwriting on the wall and wants to ensure its long-term survival.

 Just contrast this forward-thinking posture with the bumbing and stumbling of Detroit, which is so myopic that it can't see past the next quarter. Companies like Honda deserve to win, while fossils like GM deserve to lose. It's corporate natural selection at work.

"The Swedish Prime Minister, Göran Persson, has founded a non-political committee with the intent of making Sweden fossil fuel-independent by 2020."

"The hearing began with a speech the Prime Minister stating that we are about to experience the oil peak ... "

Could he be the first head of state to say that explicitly?